The Forum of the European Minority Regions starts on Thursday in Helsinki – Watch it live!

The fifth edition of the Forum of the European Minority Regions, entitled "Nordic diversity – a formula for economic growth?” takes place on 14 and 15 October 2021 in Helsinki/Helsingfors, Finland. This year, the focus will be on the minorities in the Nordic countries and their economic dimension. After all, border regions with their multilingual populations attract investment and many small and medium-sized enterprises. They are bridge builders between countries and create economic macro-regions.

Various panel discussions with high-ranking representatives from politics, business and academia will shed light on the economic added value of linguistic diversity, how the education system helps to maintain it and whether the model of autonomous regions in the Nordic countries could serve as a model for other minority regions. Finally, the Forum will try to answer the question what the EU and the Nordic Council can do to support minorities even better.

On Thursday, the Forum starts with the welcoming words and introduction at 13:45 CET, followed by two panel discussions on the economic added value of languages in cross-border cooperation and on promoting diversity through education. On Friday, the programme, including three panels, starts at 08:00 CET and concludes at 15:00 CET. For the full schedule, please visit the Forum website (all times in the programme are in EET timezone!).

The Forum, organised by the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) will be streamed live on FUEN’s Youtube channel with English interpretation and on the Zoom platform in the floor language and with English interpretation. 

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84887639217?pwd=azBaS1BWaE95VmZ2YnhNOXlsc1Vmdz09 Passcode: 039838